Indigenous activists and their supporters celebrated Sunday night after the Obama administration halted construction on a segment of the Dakota Access pipeline that would cross under Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

For months, thousands of protesters have demonstrated against the pipeline, which they say threatened the reservation’s water supply and sacred land, occasionally in the face of harsh treatment by police.

In a statement, Dave Archambault II, tribal chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, praised the Obama administration’s decision and thanked tribal youth and the group’s supporters “around the globe” for their role in halting the pipeline.